Maybe it’s a strange hobby, but other writers will understand me – When I go to a restaurant I like to look for mistakes on the menu while waiting for my food. When I find a mistake I am simultaneously joyful and outraged. In my experience, Mexican restaurants in the United States are usually the worst offenders of spelling mistakes on menus.

Do you see it? “Beef” is misspelled as “Beff.”

Last week we went to a Mexican/Salvadoran restaurant and on the dessert menu I was surprised to find that they serve “peanut butter mouse.”

Of course they meant to write “peanut butter mousse.” What a difference one letter can make!

(While we’re on the topic, I’d like to mention to any restaurant out there, if you need a native English-speaker to check over your menu before you print it, please contact me. I don’t charge much – I’ll even work for tortas and pupusas.)

Chinese restaurants are also notorious for this and how about the Vietnamese nail salon that says simply “Nail” on the sign not nails. This reminds me of how our kids used to write down all of the grammatical errors that our youth pastor would make during a church sermon to see who could find the most! Good game for kids to play – great grammar practice for them!

Jaja. I see tons of English spelling and grammatical errors in menus here in El Salvador. I’m actually surprised that quite a few restaurants offer menus in Spanish and English, at least here in San Salvador.

LOL Susan – I usually read my blog posts over a half dozen times to check for errors but sometimes I won’t see one until I hit publish :p

In books I’m reading, I’ve been known to pull out a pencil and circle typos although I have no idea why I feel the need to. I mean, what am I going to do? Contact the publisher and let them know? (I haven’t yet grown to be THAT obnoxious… Maybe it’ll be a favorite hobby when I’m really old though.)

I like how in Menudo was translated to “Beff stomach.” I was hired to translate a menu from Spanish to English once and spent a lot of time thinking about how to translate “menudo.” Entrail soup? Haha.